Its
a generational thing - cool, tech-savvy teenagers creating wild, outlandish
identities for all the world to see in cyberspace. The name of the most
popular web site is MySpace.com. Some others include: facebook, xanga,
bebo, and tagged. Each page is devoted to the identity of its creator.
He or she tends to be popular and young. The names are wild: napkinnights
tracy or no no bad kitty. There are now more than 100 million profiles
on MySpace.com. Almost two million more sign up every week. This site
has a life of its own.

I
first encountered MySpace.com while sitting in front of a computer screen
with a teenage girl in an apartment in Beijing. The girl was studying
English but was quite shy. Though I was supposed to be her conversation
partner at lunch earlier in the day, she only spoke a few words. Then,
while her mother and others socialized in another room, this girl asked
me if I would like to see her MySpace.com site. I agreed and we logged
on to the site. Her beautiful smiling face appeared in faint coloring
on the screen. Then this girl showed me the music that she liked. She
showed me how to play a game that involves pressing keys in time with
the music to win points. She was good at this game. She beat me every
time but I was improving. So, we sat there together, hanging out both
in cyberspace and the physical world - me a middle-aged American man
and she a Chinese teenager, granddaughter of a general in the Red Army,
in a world where she felt more comfortable. That was my introduction
to teenage identities and MySpace.com.

What
these teenagers want

I
can see that todays generation of teenagers has a totally different
type of experience than what I had at that age. Even so, the basics
remain the same. Teenage boys and girls are searching for their identity.
Each wants to be popular. Hemmed in by the harsh competitive requirements
of school and career, these boys and girls are yearning for individual
freedom. They want the freedom to be themselves, express themselves
in imaginative ways, and exhibit glimpses of their creative selves before
the world. MySpace.com gives them an opportunity to do just that.

These
are not serious profiles such as would be found on a job seekers
resume, but whimsical self-portraits. Some teenagers say they are 100
years old. Their heroes are not persons we would recognize as such.
The cyberspace self-portraits are not so unlike the bizarre personalities
of youth that one would see in shopping malls: girls with purple spiked
hair and plenty of cleavage, the cool and swaggering boys, pierced or
tattooed bodies, unpredictable expression of every kind.

Cyberspace
has certain advantages over hanging out in the mall. First, despite
its ominous reputation, it is safer. You can approach strangers without
fearing physical assault. You can have those exciting experiences in
the privacy of your bedroom. Too, this world of cyberspace has a broader
physical reach. Your intimate messages go out indiscriminately to the
far corners of the earth. Each person becomes a player on the world
stage. Then too, there are more possibilities for self-expression: Not
only can you tell the world your favorite kinds of music, you can offer
them an immediate experience of the sound. The visual images on the
MySpace.com site say volumes about who you are. Not only that - you
can change your self-image whenever you like. You can quickly reinvent
yourself . You can freely choose and be another cyberspace identity.

Perhaps
the biggest advantage, though, is that computer technology allows each
individual who has a MySpace.com site to know objectively how others
are responding to this image of themselves. The space has a place for
comments. It has a place for friends to be posted on the
site. A person with many friends - and the site tells exactly how many
there are - must certainly be popular. And isnt that what teenagers
want? They want friends and they want to belong to something, even if
in an electronic world.

A
Reaction from Adults

Adults
are fearful of social networking in cyberspace. To them, it is an unknown
world, fraught with many dangers. Most identity theft takes place there.
Parents tear out their hair while thinking that their daughters exhibit
revealing photos of themselves or drop sexually suggestive hints. They
might come across as sluts, inviting sexual predators to pounce on them
at a vulnerable time in their lives. The daughters, in turn, are fearful
that their parents might be watching how they present themselves on
MySpace.com. There is a natural reticence among young people to tell
their parents of certain innermost thoughts about their identity. There
is an embarrassment at being seen without knowing of this, especially
when it is the parents who are invading ones privacy. With total
strangers, one would not care so much. Indeed, there is software that
makes it easy for parents to snoop around in cyberspace and see what
their children and their childrens friends are saying about each
other.

Some
employers check the MySpace.com self-portraits of job applicants in
search of information that would not appear on resumes. Some college
officials likewise seek the more free-wheeling and candid self-portraits
of students applying for admission to their college. And so, youthful
self-expression in cyberspace comes at a certain price. But the danger
comes mostly from adults using the information for serious purposes
rather than from kids having fun. Yes, the kids, too, can hurt each
each other with innuendoes and unkind remarks. But this is part of the
process of growing up. By their very nature, teenage children fight
for rank and position in the community that they inhabit, whether in
a school cafeteria or in cyberspace. Each wants to know where he or
she stands in the eyes of ones peers. Computer technology reduces
this to a cold statistic: the number of friends or visitors
to ones web site.

Seeking
Reaction

So
this is a new way of looking at personal identity. It is a way of advertising
oneself and gaining instant feedback. Each individual puts out a self-image
that fits his or her mood at the time. Then the web site feeds back
information about the reaction of others. The computer thus democratizes
what politicians have long enjoyed: personal publicity. Instead of polls
and election results, it exhibits public favor or disfavor in terms
of rankings in a search-engine generated report. A books ranking
on Amazon.com indicates its salability or popularity in this electronic
market. A web sites ranking on Google likewise gauges public reaction,
though in a more mysterious way. The creative personality behind the
book or web site wants to know how his or her product has been received.
So it is as well with MySpace.com; one wants a large number of visitors
and friends. This shows interest in me as a person.

A
newspaper story on the phenomenon of ego-surfing - or the
practice of continually keeping tab on computer rankings related to
oneself - states: Infatuation with ones standing in the
digital age is a byproduct of the Internets most unique and basic
attributes. That is its ability to keep count. Its also a reflection
of how the Web has evolved into a culture where participation is encouraged
and opinions matter ... So for those Web denizens who use the Internet
as a means of communication and identity, the ability to count visitors,
or comments, has become an entirely new form of personal validation.

MySpace.com
is not a site like Amazon.com which sells books and other commercial
products in an electronic store. It is not an electronic want-ad listing
like Craigslist.com. In fact, it does not depend upon people personally
getting in touch with each other as for a commercial purpose. MySpace.com
discourages giving out contact information such as addresses or phone
numbers. While strangers with evil purposes may lurk behind computer
terminals eying attractive prey, the spirit of this site is to allow
people who already know each other - real friends and acquaintances,
in other words - to know more about the individuals who have put up
their personal profiles on MySpace.com. Its like wearing an article
of clothing that inspires gossip. A person makes a fashion statement,
or, in this case, a quasi-official statement about preferences in music,
books, acquaintances, and, most importantly, girl friends or boy friends,
and the public is invited to react. In the end, its about the
persons choice of personal identity. Its about identity
independence.

An Example of what is posted on MySpace.com

Visitors
to MySpace.com can see this in the types of categories listed on the
site. There is straightforward personal information. In the case of
a 21-year old West Coast female, we have the following details:

Status:

single

Here
for:

networking,
friends

Orientation:

straight

Hometown:

Sacramento

Body
type:

5
7 athletic

Ethnicity:

Asian

Religion:

Jewish

Zodiac
sign:

Aquarius

Smoke/
drink:

no/
no

Children:

someday

Education:

some
college

Then
there are Interests. Not all the categories were filled
in this case. There are general interests, cities
of interest, hot albums, favorite music, favorite
movies, heroes, and groups. The
groups included: Sexy & single on MySpace, Glacier magazine, Club
Diezel, Solmatic records, body music, Rave clothing.

The
21-year-old female made this personal statement:

I
party for a living! Yes, it's an exhausting job, but someone has to
do it! I love being spontaneous and having fun.. I give what I expect;
I expect to be respected so I give a lot of respect to people. I expect
people to be nice, so I am nice to begin with. I live in Vegas part
time, and part time in Sacramento. I spend a lot of time in LA as
well. I love the fact that I am never in the same place for long.

I
want to meet people who are NOT drama and love to have a good time.
I don't like flakes, but god knows that in vegas, top selling cereal
is FROSTED FLAKES! Pass the SELSUN BLUE!!!!

Jealousy
is not an option, spontaneity a must, and intelligence a prerequisite...

I
like cowboys cause they are the leaders of the pack.. If you are a
cow, move on to calmer pastures!

Well,
she knows who she is and has expressed it quite well on MySpace.com.
Now in her post-teen years, this West Coast woman remains focused on
identity. Reminiscent of the bar scene, people such as this are busy
defining themselves and presenting a certain image to other people in
a new medium.